


iris

by fugues



Series: marigold [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Underground Dueling, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, References to Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fugues/pseuds/fugues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he first meets Chris, it’s as V, who’s sixteen and Heartland’s apprentice. And, god, Kaito should hate him for that alone, because Kaito has already been in the underground longer than he’d care to remember - one hundred and forty six days and counting, ever since he turned fourteen and opened the brightly-colored gift box with the collars inside that he’d had to slam shut before Haruto could see the contents - and it’s all because of Heartland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	iris

**Author's Note:**

> initially written in august as #7 of the zexal au meme, but the marigold au is a specific thing and that's why it's not in that series.
> 
> most of the flowers mentioned have a couple meanings but the ones important for this fic are 'hope; faith' for irises, 'deceit' for orange mock, 'faithlessness' for columbine and, most importantly, 'pain; grief; despair' for marigolds.

When he first meets Chris, it’s as  _V_ , who’s sixteen and Heartland’s apprentice. And, god, Kaito should hate him for that alone, because Kaito has already been in the underground longer than he’d care to remember - one hundred and forty six days and counting, ever since he turned fourteen and opened the brightly-colored gift box with the collars inside that he’d had to slam shut before Haruto could see the contents - and it’s all  _because_ of Heartland.  
  
Apprentice or not, though, Chris isn’t like Heartland. He’s... nice, and maybe he’s colder and harder around Heartland but, honestly, who isn’t? Around Kaito, though, he’s nice. He smiles, and picks Kaito up off the floor after they duel, and doesn’t use the collars quite so much as an apprentice suit is really supposed to, and it’s... nice, yeah. Because Kaito is fourteen and he’s Heartland’s  _favorite_ and he’s so  _exhausted_ with it, with the duels and the collars and the... other parts, the parts that send Kaito into too-hot showers and sleepless nights because he’s trapped in skin that doesn’t feel like his own any more after the things that have been done to it.  
  
Chris makes him feel like he actually belongs to himself in the moments they spend together, and it’s  _stupid_ because Chris is  _his_  apprentice, because Chris is going to be _one_ of them, and yet...  
  
And yet Chris kisses him and Kaito lets him, and it’s not the same kind of  _letting_ as usual because Kaito  _wants_ this, it’s stupid and he shouldn’t but he  _does_. He wants it and so he lets Chris kiss him and touch him and peel away his clothes and when he’s bared before him and turns his head away it’s with shyness more than shame. He lets Chris turn his head back easily, lets him kiss away the fear and stroke away the shame and god, he can almost forget that there’s anything outside the two of them, that anyone but Chris has touched him before.  
  
(he is stupid, and he is childish, but isn’t that fitting because he still  _is_ a child, isn’t he, only fourteen and the things he’s done might have aged him but he’s still a child - though of course he is, because how could he be Heartland’s favorite if he  _weren’t_?)  
  
And Chris doesn’t feel like a part of this place. It’s so easy to forget that Chris is Heartland’s apprentice at all, so easy to separate Chris from V and trust that Chris is the one who’s  _real_. That he has the real thing and Heartland has the fragile mask.  
  
It’s so easy, in the end, for them to fall into one another. And maybe they’re both childish, maybe at sixteen Chris is no smarter than Kaito is, but they fall into each other and revolve around one another like objects in orbit and it’s something beautiful, some fragile flower growing up even in the darkness of this place because they make the light between them that lets it grow.  
  
They fall into each other and they shelter that hope in the light they make between them, in the plans they tell each other in hushed, fevered whispers between the sheets. And Chris - Chris who is stupid and tries too hard to be charming when Kaito is already charmed, when Kaito has already fallen harder and faster than he’d ever expected he’d allow himself to - buys Kaito an iris plant with a photo of a yellow bloom on the tag, says it should end up blooming around Kaito’s birthday and smiles at him, this stupid endearing thing and Kaito wants to roll his eyes and call it stupid but instead he smiles back, tells Chris, “I look forward to it.”  
  
They plan, in the meantime. Come Kaito’s birthday, the iris will bloom somewhere away, because Heartland has been  _suggesting_ , little comments about how Chris is really coming into his own, about how he really ought to have a duelist of his own, oughtn’t he, and Kaito’s so  _well-behaved_ with Chris. Little hints, here and there, that Chris is going to get that  _duelist of his own_ for his birthday. That it’ll be Kaito.  
  
(that they can run away together, take Haruto and Thomas and Michael and run and make a life together out from under Heartland’s thumb and  _god_ , they’re so  _stupid_ )  
  
So Kaito waits, on Chris’s birthday. Sits in his room on the too-hard mattress and stares at the flowerless iris and waits for Chris to come back from Heartland’s office. He’s packed an overnight bag - because they can’t pack more than that, any of them, not without arousing suspicions - and he clutches it until his knuckles go white, chews his lip and bites his nails ragged and bounces his knees impatiently and waits and worries because he’s  _scared_ , god, because it’s  _real_ and they’re going to go, they’ll be  _free_ and all he needs now is for Chris to walk through his door.  
  
Except it’s not Chris who walks through his door, in the end.  
  
Because he comes in cold and hard and  _V_ , and Kaito stares up at him and swallows hard and he doesn’t  _understand_ , it’s an act, right? So he stands and steps closer, still holding his bag, and then V opens his mouth and says in a strange, strangled voice  _Faker’s **son**_  and Kaito’s eyes go wide and the bag drops from his hand and then V’s hand is connecting with his face and something breaks inside him and his eyes shut and he thinks  _sorry, Haruto_ and then he just  
  
stops.  
  
Later, later he’ll come to broken and bruised and he’ll sit surrounded by the broken terracotta of the iris’s pot and the scattered earth and the torn remnants of the plant itself and he’ll cry. He’ll sob and scream for what they could have had and what they  _should_ have had - him and Chris but more importantly Haruto and Thomas and Michael. And when he’s cried out every last tear he’ll pick himself up and clean away the mess and from then on he won’t cry a single tear no matter what V does to him, no matter the flowers that V cuts into his back - orange mock and columbine and marigolds but never irises, never again will irises be their flower - or the things he says or the things he makes Kaito do.  
  
(later, he’ll have his moments of weakness before he forces himself to be strong forever, but for now he only leaves, leaves his body to V’s mercy and goes somewhere dark and alone and  _away_ )  
  
(it will be good practice, later)


End file.
